ccording to its leaders,
over the years, Area 23
has built a name on its
courage to challenge the
status quo, its relentless
drive to stay ahead of the curve, and its
track record of pushing clients out of
their comfort zone and into the spotlight.

And 2015 was no different. Last year, the
agency’s passion and entrepreneurial
spirit led it to most successful year in its
history, breaking all previous records for
growth and creative recognition, executives say.

For the prior three years, Area 23 was
able to deliver consistent 25 percent
growth. Never happy with being predictable, the agency beat its own record
last year, adding a whopping 35 percent
in revenue, executives say. The agency
emerged victorious in a number of competitive pitches, finishing the year with
a formidable 85 percent pitch-win rate.
Key wins included the new shingles vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline; Lilly’s
much-talked-about disease-modifying
agent for Alzheimer’s; Indivior’s treatments for opiate-use disorder and al-cohol-use disorder; Eisai’s treatments
for chemotherapy-induced nausea and
vomiting; and two oncology pipeline
products from Bayer, in prostate cancer and in hematologic malignancies.

All told, Area 23 won 18 new AORproduct assignments and struck up rela-tionships with five new clients. “So howdoes an agency pick up 18 new accountsyet only onboard 5 new clients?” execu-tives say. “Two words – organic growth.”According to agency leaders, the pastyear saw organic growth and client refer-rals making a much bigger contributionto the agency’s overall growth number.

When asked for the secret to the
agency’s growth, Co-Managing Director
Renee Mellas replied, “It’s not complicated. We do world-class work for our
clients and manage their business as if
it were our own. As a result, they want
to do more work with us, then they tell
their colleagues, and their colleagues
want to work with us.” Mellas was also
proud to point out Area 23’s “grand total of zero” account losses for 2015.

In 2015, Area 23 received more publicrecognition than it had in all of its eightyears, executives say, with its creativework dominating the healthcare awardcircuit. The agency was named MostCreative Agency and Category II Agencyof the Year by Med Ad News at the 2015Manny Awards. Area 23 also picked upManny Awards for creative campaignsin four other categories. At the MedicalMarketing & Media MM&M Awards,Area 23 stole the show, winning Mid-Sized Agency of the Year, and yielding 10trophies from a total of 13 nominationsfor creative campaigns. The agency alsowon six Clio Healthcare trophies, threeGlobal Awards, and five Creative FloorAwards (UK), bringing its total for theyear to 35 trophies. Does this make Area
23 the most awarded healthcare agencyin the U.S.? According to Co-ManagingDirector Tim Hawkey, “Technically yes,but we don’t spend a lot of time count-ing our trophies. For us, it’s not aboutthe quantity of the accolades, but ratherthe consistent quality of the work. Beingthe most awarded agency is not a sus-tainable goal, but creating work that isconsistently surprising, beautiful, ef-fective, and newsworthy… that’s some-thing that we can do every year.” Mellasadded, “Probably the most importantbenefit of this kind of recognition isthe talent that it attracts. The resumesare plentiful, which is critical when in
12 months’ time you expand staff from200 to 300 people!”

Over the past few years, one of Area 23’s
main goals has been to avoid the growing pains that come with the leaps-and-bounds growth it has been experiencing,
executives say. Leaders went into 2015

Most Admired Agency
Most Creative Agency
Best Interactive Patient Campaign
Best Interactive Physician Campaign
Best Medical Device Campaign
Best Professional Campaign
Agency of the Year, Category I
Best Consumer Campaign
Best Philanthropic Campaign
ACCOUNTS